The observant among you may have noticed that PyCharm was updated last week without an accompanying blog post. This happened as all of us on the blog team were busy with PyCon. To hopefully make up for the delay we’ve published a PyCon interview with Michael Kennedy on YouTube, and expect to see more interviews there soon!

Fixed in this Version

We’ve fixed a lot of small issues in our all-new Jupyter support. For example, you can now use ‘?’ before a statement to get documentation for an object.

When you’ve got exception breakpoints enabled, PyCharm will break your code at the point the exception you specified was thrown. The reason for breaking at this line will be shown with a gutter icon. Unfortunately, this was broken in the last release, and has now been resolved.

Several PostgreSQL inspections have been improved. Did you know PyCharm Professional Edition includes a professional database tool? Just go to View | Tool Windows | Database, and configure your data source!

Getting the New Version

You can update PyCharm by choosing Help | Check for Updates (or PyCharm | Check for Updates on macOS) in the IDE. PyCharm will be able to patch itself to the new version, there should no longer be a need to run the full installer.

About the Book

Michael and Matt describe the book as “A hands on approach to learning the the PyCharm IDE”. I reviewed it pre-release and I can certainly confirm this. The book covers a lot of ground, is well-organized, with copious examples, and covers the latest-and-greatest in Python and PyCharm. The editor, refactoring, VCS, web and databases, the debugger (of course), visual testing (double of course), and more are discussed.

At each step they show the one or two techniques to put the IDE’s power to work in everyday programming. Best of all, they explain the “why” along with the “how” — something missing in a lot of technical writing.

PyCharm provides a broad array of utility, making a book like this a tremendous resource. Like Michael’s Mastering PyCharm course, it shows that a little investment in mastering your tool can pay tremendous dividends for mastering your craft. In fact, one of the purchase options for the book is in a bundle with the video course.

About the Authors

It’s an honor recommending this book, not just because it truly is a valuable resource, but also due to the people behind it. Michael and Matt are hard-working, independent business owners who bring value to the world of Python. Both work hard and help others.

PyCharm brings a boatload of IDE features to professional Python development. Want to “level up” and learn productivity boosters? This hands-on, fast-paced webinar, run by Paul Everitt from the PyCharm team, covers tips across all the major product features.

About This Webinar

PyCharm is a mature, full-featured, professional IDE for the Python market. Since it’s built atop IntelliJ, the leading Java IDE, it has a bazillion features.

Which is overwhelming. In this session, we sort that out and show you the tips and tricks to level up your professional Python development. You’ll work along with 42 tips, organized into sections, doing the same activities demonstrated by the presenter, with a special twist: each tip has full writeup and video that you can refer to afterward. We’ll cover tips showing: IDE Setup, Navigation, Editing, Running, Debugging, Testing, Version Control, and Web and Database.

Speaking To You

Paul is the PyCharm Developer Advocate at JetBrains. Before that, Paul was a co-founder of Zope Corporation, taking the first open source application server through $14M of funding. Paul has bootstrapped both the Python Software Foundation and the Plone Foundation. Paul was an officer in the US Navy, starting www.navy.mil in 1993.

PyCharm is very excited to be hosting some of the big names in the world of Python content, aka the “Content Creators.” Who are they, what do they do, and what do they have going on in the booth at PyCon?

Let’s take a look at when they’ll be at their stand, what activities and talks they have in the mini-theater, and if they’re taking slots for one-on-one time (contact them directly for appointments.) Plus, some surprises hidden here and there.

Matt will have some of his books available and is all ears to chat about Python or Data Science. If you are looking for live corporate training for your team or organization, talk with him about details for leveling up your Python, testing, machine learning, or visualization skills.

In The Booth

At the opening reception

At the stand Friday 10:15-12PM and 1:45-3:30, Saturday 12PM-1:45 and 3:30-4:45

Doing a big reveal with Michael Kennedy Thursday 6PM during the reception

Miguel is an Argentinian residing in Portland but currently on loan to Ireland. He’s also a renowned author and teacher, particularly on the topic of Flask, with two paid courses currently available.

Chat with Miguel at the booth about your Flask questions or success stories and let him tell you about his newly discovered love for MicroPython and what he is doing to bring a Flask-like web framework to it.

In The Booth

At the opening reception

At the booth stand Saturday 10:15-12PM

Participating in a giveaway Saturday 10:15-10:45

Giving a mini-talk on Flask on Saturday 1:15-1:30

Taking slots for one-on-one sessions at the booth

Miguel is also giving a PyCon tutorial Thursday morning and a book signing at the O’Reilly

At Real Python you can learn all things Python from the ground up. Their tutorials are created, curated, and vetted by a community of more than 60 expert Pythonistas. With new content published weekly and curated Python learning paths, you’ll always find something to boost your skills. Join their 1,000,000+ monthly readers and take your Python skills to the next level.

In The Booth

At the opening reception

At the booth stand Friday 8AM-10:15 and 12PM-1:45, Saturday 10:15-12PM and 12PM-1:45

Brian Okken’s Test & Code podcast has quickly become a goto source for Python developers, not just for topics about testing, but enjoyable and useful conversations with key people in Python. Brian is most known for writing Python Testing with pytest, the definitive book on pytest. We hosted him for a Productive pytest With PyCharm webinar last year.

In The Booth

At the opening reception

Recording material for a special PyCon episode of Test & Code at the reception in the mini-theater, Thursday 7-7:30PM

At the booth stand Friday 1:45-3:30 and 3:30-4:45, Saturday 1:45-3:30 and 3:30-4:45

Participating in the book signing Saturday 10:15-10:45, including sales of his book

Co-hosting a live episode of Python Bytes in the booth mini-theater Saturday 12:15-12:50

Giving a mini-talk on “pytest Parametrize and Mocks” on Friday 12:55-1:10

Cristian Medina’s tryexceptpass is growing as a destination for how-to’s, lessons learned and engineering experiments. While centered around Python code, software engineering concepts and their trade-offs are a common theme as well. Most known for his asyncio articles and the “practicality beats purity” series, Cris is also a presenter at Python conferences, a guest of TalkPython and Podcast.__init__, and the maintainer of sofi and korv.

Swing by and chat with Cris, share your experiences, discuss any topics you want to learn more about, ask software questions, or just hang out!

In The Booth

At the opening reception

At the booth stand Friday 10:15-12PM and 4:45-6PM, Saturday 8:00-10:15AM and 4:45-6PM

Giving a mini-talk on “Anatomy of an Automated Build System” on Friday 1:30-1:45

Dan started with slides setting the scene, then went into Scientific Mode, showing how it can be an alternative to the notebook experience. He then covered Jupyter Notebooks, finishing with the Database tool. His code is available in a GitHub repo.

This webinar generated high attendance and likely set the record for number of questions asked. We weren’t able to respond to all the questions during the webinar but we’ll be following up by email.

Thanks to everyone that attended and thanks to Dan for taking the time to present this to us.

In the past few years, Python has made a big push into data science and PyCharm has as well. Years ago we added Jupyter Notebook integration, then 2017.3 introduced Scientific Mode for workflows that felt more like an IDE. In 2019.1 we re-invented our Jupyter support to also be more like a professional tool.

Let’s start with the key point: what does PyCharm bring to data scientists?

PyCharm brings a productivity boost to data scientists, by helping them explore data, debug Python code, write better Python code, and understand Python code faster. As a PyCharm user, I experienced and benefited from these productivity boosters, which I distilled into my first Pluralsight course, so that data scientists can make the most out of PyCharm in their activities.

For the webinar: who is it for and what can people expect you to cover?

If you are a data scientist who dabbled with PyCharm, then this webinar is for you. I will cover PyCharm’s most relevant features to data science: the scientific mode and the completely rewritten Jupyter support. I will show how these features interplay with other PyCharm features, such as refactoring code from Jupyter cells. I will use easy-to-understand code examples with popular data science libraries.

Now, back to the start: tell us a little about yourself.

Currently, I am a senior backend developer for Dimensions – a research data platform that uses data science, and links data on a total of over 140 million publications, grants, patents and clinical trials. I’ve always been curious, which led me to do my PhD studies at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and learn more about statistics and data analysis.

Do Python data scientists feel like programmers first and data scientists second, or the reverse?

In my opinion, data science is a melting pot of skills from three complementing backgrounds: programmers, statisticians and business analysts. At the start of your data science journey, you are going to rely on the skills from your main background, and – as your skills expand – you are going to feel more and more like a data scientist.

Your course has a bunch of sections on software development practices and IDE tips. How important are these practices to “professional” data science?

As part of the melting pot, programmers bring a lot of value with their experiences ranging from software development practices to IDE tips. Data scientists from a programming background are already familiar with most of these, and those from other backgrounds benefit immensely.

Think of a code base that starts to grow: how do you write better code? How do you refactor the code? How can a new team member understand that code faster? These are some of the questions that my course helps with.

The course also covers three major facilities in PyCharm Professional: Scientific Mode, Jupyter support, and the Database tool. How do these fit in?

All of them are data centric, so they are very relevant to data scientists. These facilities are integrated nicely with other PyCharm capabilities such as debugging and refactoring. Overall, after watching the course and getting familiar with these capabilities, data scientists get a nice productivity boost.

This webinar is good timing. You just released the course and we just re-invented our Jupyter support. What do you think of the new, IDE-centric Jupyter integration?

I think the new Jupyter integration is an excellent step in the right direction, because you can use both Jupyter and PyCharm features such as debugging and code completion. Joel Grus gave an insightful and entertaining talk about Jupyter limitations at JupyterCon 2018. I think the new Jupyter integration in PyCharm can eventually help solve some Jupyter pain points raised by Joel, such as hidden state.

What’s one big problem or pain point in Jupyter that could benefit from new ideas or tooling?

Reproducibility is problematic with Jupyter and it is important for data science. For example, it’s easy to share a notebook on GitHub, then someone else tries to run it and gets different results. Perhaps the solution is a mix of discipline and better tools.

Today, let’s do an overview of the kinds of activities in “the big tent.”

Workshops

Miguel Grinberg, one of the boothmates, is doing his First Steps in Web Development With Python tutorial Thursday morning, 9AM to 12:20. He’s fantastic at this and a real icon of PyCon tutorials over the years.

Thursday afternoon at 3:30 I’m doing 42 PyCharm Tips and Tricks in Room 13. It’s a hands-on workshop with a secret twist which I’ll reveal at the event (and after.) We’ll have some of the PyCharm team with me to help folks in the audience with questions.

6:30 Brian does some recordings for a special Test&Code podcast episode

Our videography team will be roaming around cranking out footage

PyCharm Stand

Come meet the PyCharm team! We’ll have ten of us, most from the core team. We go to events not to do sales but to listen. (Some might say, face the consequences of our decisions.) Want to talk to the main developer of our debugger? She’s there. Ditto for the new Jupyter support, vim emulation, etc.

Or if you just want to say hi, then please come by, take a picture and tweet it, and get a retweet from us.

Content Creators Stands

Podcasts, articles, video courses and training, books…as the previous article mentioned, we have a home for many of the key Python “content creators” to share a presence, use the mini-theater and one-on-one space, and just hang out and have fun.

There are two stands for them to share in timeslots throughout the conference. We’ll make the schedule available closer to PyCon. But they’ll all be around for the reception.

Mini-Theater

This is the second big addition this year: booth space for small talks, both scheduled and impromptu, by the PyCharm team, the Content Creators, and even by some others. We’ll announce this in detail later.

Not just talks…we’ll announce some special events as well.

One-on-Ones

“Can you take a look at my project?” We get this a lot at conferences, as well as “I’m really interested in the new Jupyter support”, or “I heard your pytest support is really neat, can you show me?”

The PyCharm booth will have a dedicated area along with the conference miracle of seating, where we can work one-on-one. Bring your laptop “into the shop” for diagnosis. Show us some big idea you’ve been working on. Get a tour of some PyCharm feature that interests you, from the person that implemented it.

This also applies to the Content Creators as well. Saw an article or listened to a podcast and want more? Pick a time to meet up with them in the one-on-one area. Did I mention seating?

Videography

We have a crew hanging around different times at the booth, doing interviews and producing clips. If you’re around and want to give a shoutout to PyCon for the hard (volunteer!) work putting on a great show, let’s get you on camera.

Data Science! A huge topic which has swept through all programming languages, especially Python. PyCharm has unique facilities aimed at data science professionals. But if you’re a data scientist, where to start on using PyCharm with it?

Speaking To You

Dan is a backend software engineer with Digital Science, at their Romania office. He uses Python, Linux, Kubernetes and the Amazon cloud to help advance research with dimensions.ai – an innovative research data platform. He got his first job as a developer in 2003, working mostly with Microsoft technologies. In 2009, Dan started his PhD studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. He returned to industry in 2014 and transitioned to the Python ecosystem.

Want to meet key podcasters, authors, and teachers at PyCon? This year PyCharm has an expanded booth with space shared by many of the key “Python Content Creators.” Come say hi, watch short talks by them, us, and others in our mini-theater, or schedule one-on-one slots in our seating area.

We have lots more to announce on this in the coming weeks, but let’s lead with a quick overview.

Python Content Creators

We’re happy to be hosting our friends from PyCons past, giving these “Python Content Creators” booth space to talk with their folks:

Michael Kennedy, Talk Python To Me

Brian Okken, Test & Code

Dan Bader, Real Python

Matt Harrison, MetaSnake

Bob Belderbos and Julian Sequeira, PyBites

Cris Medina, tryexceptpass

Miguel Grinberg

How will it work? We will have two stands, with their logos and information on the backstop. They’ll take 2 hours slots rotating through their “booth.” Look for announcements from them about the slots and other activities.

Other Activities, Tell Me More

Our booth has 4 equal parts: an area for PyCharm, an area for the Python Content Creators, a one-on-one place with chairs, and a mini-theater.

The one-on-one place lets the PyCharm development team (yes, the actual people that make PyCharm) or the Python Content Creators pre-arrange or spontaneously do individual discussions. If you want to get your PyCharm configured for your project with a PyCharm developer, this is your chance. Of course you can also debug something, do a deep dive on a topic, solve some problem, get feedback, whatever. Let’s face it, sometimes it’s nice at conferences to sit down and chat.

The mini-theater is the focus. We’ll have a schedule of talks by the PyCharm team, by the Python Content Creators, even by others…for example, Barry Warsaw and I will do a short version of the Python 1994 talk. We jokingly refer to this as the “PyCon Rejects Space.”

“Python Content Creators”…Neat Idea, Where Did It Come From?

Last year we participated in a Humble Bundle with several popular creators of Python training, courses, etc. We did an open space with the “Humble Bundlers” and were surprised by the response. People wanted to talk with us, collectively, as much as individually. And we wanted to talk with each other.

After the session we joked: “PyCharm should get a big ol’ booth next year and host the Humble Bundlers.” And here we are…joke-driven development.

We have much more to announce, so stay tuned to our blog, Twitter, and most importantly each of the Python Content Creators. This is going to be fun.

Just now at AnacondaCON, JetBrains CEO Max Shafirov, and Anaconda’s CEO Scott Collison announced the start of our collaboration.

The PyCharm team has been working hard in the last months to improve the data science experience in PyCharm. To serve the data science market even better, we’re happy to announce that we’re now joining forces with the leader in the data science space: Anaconda.

As a first step, we’re releasing PyCharm 2019.1.1 today, with some small improvements for using Conda environments in PyCharm: we’ve fixed various bugs related to creating Conda envs and installing packages into them.

We’d also like to announce the availability of PyCharm for Anaconda: a new version of PyCharm with enhanced Anaconda support.